Forty years ago, I spent about six days (cumulative) of my life writing the pilot script and small-b bible for a Saturday morning cartoon series called Dungeons & Dragons. In my line of work, you sometimes spend a lot of time working on things that, once they reach an audience, are consumed and quickly forgotten. Even some things that are considered successful for a while can fade from memory with the passage of years.
Ah, but every so often, you get involved in something that people remember and treasure and keep talking about. I feel like I have now spent more than six days (cumulative) being interviewed about this series. It went on CBS on September 17, 1983 and lasted three seasons. Do not believe those who claim it was driven from the airwaves by pressure groups who saw satanic subtext in the series.
It went off for the same reason most shows go off: Because the ratings were declining and — rightly or wrongly — the brass at the network didn't think it would have enough viewers to sustain another season. Yes, there were protests about its content but not many and CBS, at least in those days, was pretty good about ignoring such outcries if — and this is always a Big If — the viewers seem to want whatever is being outcried about.
It was a good show because of good writers, good producers, good artists, good voice talent, good everything…and I was mostly a spectator to all that goodness, having opted not to stick with it. Still, thanks to the gent who was my agent at the time, my name was seen for a micro-second in the credits each week so I get more kudos than I probably earned.
An aside to anyone who doesn't know this: If you're in the creative and collaborative arts and your career has any kind of length or breadth to it, you will often get less credit than you deserve for things. You will occasionally get zero credit. And every rare once-in-a-while, you will get more than you merit. From your point-of-view, it may feel like the universe is doing a big Make Good on you, overcrediting you here to compensate for the undercrediting you got elsewhere.
But you shouldn't expect others to see it that way. Someone else who worked on Dungeons & Dragons once took me out to lunch basically to tell me how much he resented my onscreen credit. Like me, he didn't work on every episode but he felt he deserved most of the recognition for the show's success. He said — and this is verbatim — "I should have had your credit" and didn't laugh when I replied, "You should have had my agent."
Quite recently, I sat for the video podcast below with a fine interviewer and a major fan of the series, Heath Holland. It's almost an hour and we talked about some other things but it's mostly about Dungeons & Dragons…